Whistling After Dark
by jwhittacre
Summary: Prequel to a story I haven't posted yet. All OC's in this one so far, but stick around. When strange things start happening and people start disappearing in the Arizona desert, Ruth enlists the help of Sarah and the Cat to solve the mystery.
1. The Visitor

This is written as a way to lay foundations for some of my own characters that appear in later stories. There are all O.C.'s in this chapter, though in chapters to come there will be some cameo appearances of familiar faces(I'm not going to give it away, I'd rather keep you hanging!) This takes place in the Hellboy comicverse. I can promise lots of monsters, as well as the appearance of some B.P.R.D agents in the next few chapters. So, if you're hoping for pages full of your favorite H.B. characters, try a different story? Otherwise, please enjoy.

* * *

**July 1969 - Arizona**

A shadow landed on the stucco tiles of the roof with a velvety thump, sliding into the shadow of the wall. It crossed toward the gutter and made another leap onto the stone patio below. Moonlight reflected from the surface of the swimming pool, painting the night around it a shivering, slivery blue. The shadow slipped around the pool, blending into the darkness at the edges and making its way toward a window. Soft, golden light lit the room within. The window was open slightly, letting in the cool night air. The darkness was warm and still. Somewhere, away from the suburban homes, a coyote yipped and a dog returned the remark, barking. These sounds blended in with the light traffic on the highway and the insects humming in the Arizona summer's dusk.

Sarah looked up from her book, hearing a coyote's song someplace outside. She yawned and looked at the clock and the desk, surprised to see it was nearly 1 o'clock am. A slight noise near her window made her spine stiffen and she felt cold, even in the warm night. She whirled, images of strange men from the evening news inevitably crossing through her mind. Her fears redoubled as a black shape came stealthily through her window toward her.

As the form crossed into the arc of light shed by her reading lamp, she recoiled by instinct, reaching for something heavy, then stopped as she recognized the visitor.

"You were trying to frighten me on purpose! That's so typical!" She smirked. The black cat sat back on its haunches and licked its paw nonchalantly, watching her from the corner of its eye.

"Don't flatter yourself," He said, voice tinged with mockery. Then his voice became more serious and he looked straight at her, emerald eyes sinking into hers and once again making shivers creep up her spine. Sarah sat down on her bed, metal coils creaking slightly as she drew her knees to her chest and crossed her arms over them. Her own eyes gazed out warily at the cat. "Long time no see."

The cat stopped bathing long enough to cast her a silent, baleful look before returning to the task of his personal hygiene. The girl waited, too, knowing that trying to get the cat to speak before he deigned to do so was a futile task. The moments drew themselves out and, after a few minutes, Sarah sighed impatiently.

"Something's happening," Remarked the soot-black feline. He raised a paw again, coral pink tongue flicking out once more. Sarah narrowed her eyes – waiting was one thing, toying with her was another.

"Well? That's not exactly a lot to go on. You'd better have a more solid reason than that for climbing in my bedroom window in the middle of the night," She remarked.

"Something bad," He stated flatly. Sarah waited.

"Something's stirring in the desert. It's not something we're used to dealing with. Ruth won't admit it, but I don't think she knows what's going on. She says you're to come at once."

Sarah frowned. "Ruth doesn't know what's happening?" she asked, then, "what _do_ we know?"

The cat sat a bit straighter, his eyes piercing hers. "We've got to go. Pack something quickly. We'll talk on the way."

Sarah sighed and crossed to her closet, snatching her backpack from the door handle where it'd hung since June. She went to her closet and grabbed some other things, throwing them in. Then, on an after thought, she pulled on a sweater over the tee-shirt she was wearing. Sitting down on the bed, she pulled on her shoes. She'd never changed into her pajamas that night and was still wearing jeans and socks. She looked at the cat and stood up, slinging the pack over her shoulder. She'd been annoyed earlier. Now there was a challenge laid in front of her, and she felt the slight touch of adrenaline in her system she'd come to associate with these visits. Maybe that was what made her good at this.

"Let's go," He said. He leaped to the window ledge and then out into the night, and she followed him. Within seconds, they were gone.


	2. Legends and Questions

**Author's Note: **This is written as a way to lay foundations for some of my own characters that appear in later stories. There are all O.C.'s in this chapter, though in chapters to come there will be some cameo appearances of familiar faces (I'm not going to give it away, I'd rather keep you hanging!) This takes place in the Hellboy comicverse. I can promise lots of monsters, as well as the appearance of some B.P.R.D agents in the next few chapters. So, if you're hoping for pages full of your favorite H.B. characters, try a different story? Otherwise, please enjoy. As a reminder, this takes place in 1969.

* * *

The pair walked along through the night, Sarah's shoes crunching in the gravel.

"Ruth said she'd meet us," Said the cat. Sarah nodded silently; waiting for the explanation she knew would come. She didn't need to ask twice.

Above, the stars painted the desert sky. Sarah looked up at them, trusting her feet.

"The great loom," Remarked the cat, looking up too. "According to the Navajos, the jumble of stars in the night sky reflects the disorders and confusion of life itself."

Sarah knew he was about to tell her, and she waited. He was leading his way into the story. It was lsomething he liked to do, perhaps to make himself seem more important. It was frustrating, but arguing with a cat, any cat, was one of the most futile excercises possible. Arguing with _this_ cat was even worse. Eventually, he sighed.

"Three weeks ago, a young woman was dragged into the desert and killed. You probably heard about her disappearance on the news. She was found twenty miles from her car. Her heart had been eaten."

Sarah frowned, shivering despite the sweater she was wearing. Nights were cool in the desert, but sometimes shivering had nothing to do with temperature.

"The only evidence of predators was on that wound, no where else on her body. It wasn't anything we know of, either. The tracks and bites resembled a canine's, but larger. Too large to be a dog or wolf-hybrid." He paused, and then continued. "Her shoes were removed and placed backwards on her feet, like the Navajo believe corpses and ghosts wear them."

"That's strange, but not enough to concern Ruth on its own. For all we know, it could be some serial killer." The cat gave her a skeptical look and she shrugged, defending the statement. "Weirder stuff has happened."

"Her body disappeared from the morgue where she was being kept the next night, after the reports had been made. The alarm systems weren't tripped, and nothing came up on cameras, but one. It shows a coyote, walking down the hallway."

Sarah began to say something, but stopped as she heard the sound of an engine. A car was coming down the small road to the left, turning out onto the highway and driving towards them, going the wrong way regardless of traffic laws on the currently deserted roadway. Sarah recognized it as Ruth's land rover. She smiled as the Navajo woman pulled up alongside them, leaning over to unlock the passenger-side door. Southern rock was blasting a little too loudly from the radio.

"Get in, get in!" She shouted, smiling. Ruth's face was worn from years of sun, wind, and rain, but it was clear she'd been beautiful as a young woman. Her face was angular, with high cheekbones and a full, warm smile. Her hair was an even mixture of black and silver, stemming from her temples. Ruth wore it cut slightly above her shoulders, and tonight it was pulled back into a short ponytail. She grinned at the young girl and shifted the vehicle into drive, laughing as the cat was forced to leap into the car at the last minute before Sarah shut the door. He glared at Ruth for a moment, irritated.

"You didn't have to do that!" He shouted over the music. Or at least, attempted to shout. It came out as more of a yowl.

Ruth shrugged. "Maybe I did." She turned to Sarah. "Buckle up. These roads leading into the desert are a pretty rough ride." Sarah did so, smiling. She'd been to Ruth's home many times, and on each occasion, Ruth said the same thing.

As the jeep bumped along, Ruth switched off the radio. "I take it the cat told you what's happened?" Sarah nodded, looking away from the window; where the inky black sky and stars reached down to meet endless cacti and sandstone. In the distance, the glow of Phoenix's lights was visible. The pavement was patchy, crisscrossed with fractures and, in places, eroded away entirely.

"About that woman. Do you have any idea what could have done that?"

"I'm pretty sure. Have you ever heard of the chindi?" Ruth asked.

"A what?" asked Sarah. Ruth sighed.

"Dine don't like to speak about the dark side of our culture, especially chindi and the like. Speaking about them is bad luck." Ruth used the Navajo word for her tribe, "Dine". Sarah was quite familiar with the reluctance of anyone within the reservation to let anyone from outside know about their business. This relucatance to talk increased tenfold where the supernatural was concerned. Sarah suspected the only reason Ruth chose to talk to and invlove her was because the woman considered her a daughter. She'd practically raised her. Even so, Ruth had only began to speak freely about her job in recent months, since their last 'adventure'. The girl glanced at the woman driving. She looked about ready to continue, but she was cut off.

"Humans are so superstitious," said the cat, its green eyes blinking eerily in the dark cab. "Of course, Navajo are a lot smarter than most of you." His gaze turned to Sarah.

Sarah glared at the cat, where he sat, crouched on the rattling floorboards. "Some people think black cats are bad luck, too. Maybe we should throw you out of the truck."

Ruth kept her eyes on the road, deftly maneuvering the little jeep around pot holes and across washouts. "The Navajos believe that when a person dies, a ghost—what they call a _chindi_—is released with the last dying breath. This _chindi_ is always an evil force who returns to avenge some offense. Contact with a _chindi_ is very dangerous, and causes sickness or misfortune. So the Navajo are quite fearful of and take every precaution to avoid contact with the ghosts, as well as those who deal with them. The coyote caught on the security tapes at the morgue was the chindi of the young woman. That much I'm sure of. The bigger question is what's been doing this."

"_Been_ doing this? You say it like this has happened more than once." Sarah looked at Ruth questioningly.

Ruth shook her head but continued. "This is the only body that's been found. But people have been going missing for a month or two, out on these roads. Hitchhikers, campers, backpackers, kids out here getting drunk. And there have been a few reports of strange things going on. A couple of people were trying to hitchhike their way back to Flagstaff; they were high. Of course, they thought they saw aliens, but from what I heard, this sounds more like old magic." She turned off the paved road onto a small dirt track marked with a rusty, shotgun-riddled mail box. "There've been rumors on the reservation, too. I don't live there, but I visit, and I know enough people to hear things. They say there's something – they think it's a Skinwalker – attacking vehicles and cursing people."

Sarah knew a little about Skinwalkers. Ruth didn't like to talk about them, but the jobs they did usually required her to, and she had told Sarah a little here and there. Sarah doubted her knowledge amounted to much, but at least it was something. They could be a cat, a coyote, a dog, a bear, whatever the Navajo witch wanted to be. The Navajo witches picked their skins for the type of job they planed to do. The coyote skin for high speed, accurate sense of smell, and acute agility. The bear skin for brute strength, and so on. Along with their new abilities, the Navajo Skinwalkers still retained their full mental capacities. If the Navajo witch was a fairly or highly intelligent person, when he or she changed into a Skinwalker they carried that intelligence with them and you had a very dangerous opponent on your hands. Skinwalkers also used mind control and disease to hurt their victims.

Sarah had met Ruth twelve years ago, when her grandmother had left the four-year-old girl with an "old friend" for three months while she ran through her recently departed husband's savings account in Las Vegas. In that time Sarah had come to care for Ruth more than she cared for the rest of her family: her dad was a CEO who was on business trips more often than her was home, and her mother was dead. Over the next years, the situation had been oft repeated. Even when her family was home, Sarah seemed to prefer Ruth's company. The woman liked Sarah well enough, too, an often invited the girl to stay with her. As far as her father was concerned, getting the girl out of his hair was a welcome blessing. That was why Sarah, now a teen and old enough to get in real trouble if she wanted to, was able to just get up and leave in the middle of the night with no notice and not have her face on the news the next day. Her dad would be in Newark until the end of the month, if not longer. How Ruth had ever come to know Sarah's grandmother was a mystery. The 50-something year old Navajo was at least 10 years younger than her grandmother, and, for all her beliefs and superstitions, infinitely more normal and sane than any other adult figure in Sarah's life.

Sarah looked at Ruth. "Do _you_ think it's a Skinwalker?" She asked. Ruth shook her head.

"I'm not sure, but this doesn't seem like a Skinwalker. They usually leave non-natives alone. It'd be really unusual for one of them to be repeatedly going after people it's got no connection to. Skinwalkers and chindis are about taking out grudges on their enemies. You know, drama. This thing seems to be going after the people that it's got turning up on its doorstep. Most of them are the sort of people who don't get missed. It's as if it's taking the prey that are close at hand."

Sarah listened as Ruth continued. "It doesn't fit with anything in Navajo legends, so I'm not familiar with it.

The cat cleared its throat. "Of course, not everything fits with Navajo legends. Navajo legends are like the legends of other human cultures – they're an attempt at rationalizing things which cannot be explained and passing on the few encounters they've had with real magical beings."

Ruth gave a dry laugh.

"Don't get me wrong. Navajo legends are more truthful than those of some other human cultures. But legends nonetheless. Most humans never get to see or experience true magic. I, on the other hand, am a creature born of magic." He looked at Ruth and Sarah as if they should feel honored and humbled by his mere presence.

This time both Sarah and Ruth were left struggling to control their laughter.


End file.
